William Wilcox Edel (1918)
William Wilcox Edel was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 16, 1894. The outbreak of World War I prompted Edel to enlist as a naval chaplain, a year before his graduation from the School of Theology. After completing his studies in 1918, Edel served the navy for thirty years. He served in the Atlantic, acted as the superintendent of education in American Samoa, and during World War II was the area chaplain for the South Pacific.
Boston University awarded Edel an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree in 1935. A decade later, Dickinson College elected Edel to be its twenty-second president. He held the position for thirteen years, during which he oversaw the swift postwar growth in the school, modernized the curriculum, and increased the size of the faculty.
In 1959, Edel resigned from his post, having drawn severe criticism for his handling of the “LaVallee Case,” in which he dismissed a member of the faculty who had been accused of being a Communist by the Un-American Activities Committee of the United States House of Representatives.
Edel retired to California, and continued to work as a Methodist minister. He died on September 16, 1996, at 102 years old.
Works:
Edel, William W. My Hundred Years, 1894-1994. S.I.: Mailliw, 1994.